Without either of these two men, your sorry ass would be speaking German. 

Republicans are and have always been isolationists, that was one of the stark differences with G.W. Bush, he is the first and only US president ever to wage a preemptive war against an aggressive nation (Iraq). 

It seems foolish to judge a preisdnet largely based ons something he probably couldn't of got out of the way if he tried.  I mean, how many presidents WOULDN'T of signed that bill in his place?

You'd be surprised.

Some historians now suggest the reason Japan surrendered is because they thought Russia was going to invade.

It generally gets lost in common conversiation but in reality it was found that when Japan was trying to send the US a surrender message through Russia before the second nuclear bomb dropped... the reality was. 

Japan wasn't trying to surrender.  They were trying to put off a Russian invasion by convincing the Russians the war was over so they would stop there preperations. 

The Japanese gameplan was to force the US to invade... while keeping russia unprepaired... deal heavy casualties and force the US to break it's treaty with the British, French and Russians to seek nothing but unconditional surrender.  Allowing Japan to keep the emepror and it's government, and possibly some of it's outside conquest.

This is something generally ignored because people either want to use that fake surrender as a claim that the second nuclear bomb was worthless or that the second nuclear bomb is what forced the surrender.   (It really did help, but that combined with the russian invasion were what did it.)

Anyway, my list

Best

1) Theodore Roosevelt - Was someone who was able to compromise while still getting shit done.  Only president widely considered one of the greatest who DIDN'T have a giant ass war to bail us out of.  Put in just about the right level of government controls into most areas. 

2)  George Washington - The reason so few revolutions actually seem to result in true monoarchs is because of the lack of leaders like George Washinton who stand up and say "I don't want to be King/Dictator." 

3)  Thomas Jefferson - Lousiana Purchase.  He had native american issues, but at least was for assimilation above all else.  Unlike a guy in the bottom of the list.

4)  Lincoln - Why so low on the list?  Well, because honsetly I think Lincoln was partly a product of his time.  I think the presidents above would of done just as well during the Civil War if not beter.  Did a lot of awful things as well...  Nowhere near FDR or Woodrow Wilson level though.

5)  Really any number of presidents work here.... no one else stands out head and above the next 6-10 i can think of.

Worst

1)  James Buchanon - Basically caused the Civil war.

2) Andrew Jackson - Jacksonian Democracy is great and all but it doesn't make up for fucking genocide.  It just doesn't.

3) FDR - Sure, we won WW2... great if your an "Ends justify the means" type person, however the list of his crimes makes George W Bush look like a saint.  

The guy imprisoned completely innocent citizens because they found out he was plotting to get us into WW2, while running a campaign that directly said he would keep us out of WW2 because that's what most of the people wanted.  He tried to destroy the supreme court by passing  a measure that would let presidents nominate as many justices as they wanted until they got the ruling they wanted.  The list of shit he did and shit he wanted to do is too long for this.

4) Franklin Pierce - Same as Buchanon but to a lesser degree

5) Hebert Hoover - Ironically considered the posterchild of not acting during times of economic disaster.  In reality he was the very first President who advocated cyclical spending, and did so.  He actually greatly increased government spending by a level that was pretty unprecedented at the time.  This is frogtten only by how much FDR raised it.

There are a lot of historians that suggest a lot of things. Was Japan afraid of Russia? Oh, I'm sure they were. Did Japan not want assets captured by Russia? I'm pretty certain of that as well, especially when the other option is surrendering to the United States, a much more forgiving and progressive nation.

But let's be realistic about this. The United States killed over a quarter of a million people in three days without losing a single life. Japan was going to surrender. They had absolutely no other option. Did Russia help them along with that process? Possibly, but it wouldn't have mattered much in the end. Japan was going to surrender in the coming days or weeks anyway. The threat of atomic weaponry was too real and too imminent not to surrender, lest they face total and complete annihilation.

Does that make him one of the best presidents... or just one of the luckiest ones?

It seems foolish to judge a preisdnet largely based ons something he probably couldn't of got out of the way if he tried.  I mean, how many presidents WOULDN'T of signed that bill in his place?

Well it wasn't so much assets as it was northern Japan.  The Japanese had planned on an all out southern defense and were afraid of a "split country" scenario like Korea, or Germany.

Japanese mindset at the time was kind of.... well crazy honestly.  The mindset of the Japanese leaders at the end of WW2 is facinating as hell... I mean before the bombs dropped they were in a situation that 90% of countries would surrender in.  They had no food, had the war ended weeks later, millions more would starved to death.  Quick US mobilization to save the japanse civilians is an untold story... and likely why the US and Japan have such an interesting cultural connection.

By historians suggest, i mean documents actually more or less say that.  It's just a matter of "were the japanese honest with themselves." 

It's insane. There were elements in the Japanese government and more specifically, the military, that didn't want to surrender after the bombs. My point is that they would have surrendered. Despite their insanity, the overwhelming fear of the bombs would have pushed the stalwarts to the side as the Japanese people began to starve and their society crumbled from the inevitable chaos that follows such a situation.

If the Japanese realized that America had no more bombs, I might be more inclined to believe that they could have held out for longer than they did. But they didn't know that and the sheer terror of living in a world where entire cities could be devastated in the blink of an eye would have forced the surrender sooner rather than later.

With that said, the Russians certainly sped it up a few days by invading Manchuria. At that point, the Japanese were double-fucked. No one, and I mean no one, wanted to be under the thumb of the Soviet Union.